


Berenice's Burning Hair

by RossettiMucha



Category: Holby City
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-02
Updated: 2016-10-02
Packaged: 2018-08-19 05:27:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8191867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RossettiMucha/pseuds/RossettiMucha
Summary: Serena imagines meeting Bernie in an infinite number of ways. She thinks it might have always been inevitable.





	

Sometimes, Serena wondered what life would have been like if she’d met Berenice Wolfe when they were young: who they could have been; what they could have been to each other. They existed all at once in her mind, in different times and different places - a thousand misaligned refractions of their image, all tipped with the soft pink shades of Bernie’s slow and secret smirk. She dreamed of them, those infinite versions of themselves, scattered across frozen decades like seeds cast by the winds. 

In the weeks immediately following their first introduction in the hospital car park, Serena thought of Bernie as at once tantalisingly open and wholly unknowable. She was the sort of delicious human puzzle that would have appealed to her when she was still Serena McKinnie - before she met and married Edward Campbell, and learned to associate the enigmatic with the downright deceitful. 

There they were, in 1983; two university freshers, straight out of sixth form and careening thoughtlessly into a world still limitless in its possibilities. Serena saw herself as she had been back then: hair home permed and pinned back with slides, the barest traces of puppy fat still clinging to her cheeks. Wide-eyed and naïve and all too eager to please. Bernie wouldn’t have had that razor sharp bone structure yet either, Serena thought, though she’d never seen a photograph old enough to confirm it. She’d be all limbs and messy hair, a gangly tomboy in ray-ban wayfarers and shoulder-padded blazers. She’d probably still have the same quiet confidence as the present day Bernie, the same combined air of mystery and comfort. Still as whip smart and brilliant as she was in 2016, but without the accompanying shadows in her eyes. Serena had the sneaking suspicion that she would have admired Bernie immensely; perhaps have hero-worshipped her from afar. Her own 18-year-old self had worn her heart entirely too much on her sleeve, open and honest and frequently too intense. Still unbroken. 

They’d meet in a lecture hall, perhaps, or the union, or at a grimy and otherwise forgettable house party; two young girls, untouched by the pain of living. They’d shake hands – and wasn’t it funny, Serena thought, that she considered handshakes to be exclusively ‘theirs’ now, a secret to be shared – and then… well then, the road forked a hundred different ways. She didn’t know who she’d be, if she’d met Bernie at 18. They could have been lifelong friends, or colleagues, or something more - or they could have never spoken again, Serena’s own mercenary little mind treating Bernie as nothing but an academic rival, to be disposed of with minimum fuss on her way to the top of the medical profession. She suspected that she would have been just ruthless enough for it to play out no other way. Still, she couldn’t help but wonder what it would have been like; to have lived an entire life with Bernie Wolfe by her side.

//

Whenever she hung up a particularly trying phone call to Elinor, Serena couldn’t help but imagine what life might have been like if she’d met Bernie when their children were little – before the years and misunderstandings eroded the foundations of their respective families. Complicated relationships all of them, these days - too full of ghosts and resentments to ever be as free and easy as they had been, even with bridges patched and mended. 

Bernie would be home on leave, or even working in a local hospital, never having joined the army in the first place. Serena didn’t think about the details too deeply. The universe was infinite in its imaginative possibilities, and the circumstances of their meeting were unimportant; it only mattered that Bernie was there, her face open and kind, unlined by the years and the harsh desert sun. Elinor, so much like herself as a girl, would have befriended Charlotte in a park, all mindless chatter and bright smiles. Charlotte, Serena thought, would be quieter, shyer – and maybe it was only a mother’s pride, but she thought that Elinor would have charmed Bernie’s two instantly, a lifelong friendship formed. 

They’d find a bench in the last patch of warm sun and watch their children play. Serena always imagined it as autumn time. She had a sneaking suspicion that Bernie would look wonderful, lit up by the golden evening light of a turning season, hair a blinding halo of ochre and umber. It would suit her, that specific time of year - all softened shades and cool, crisp air. Her nose would be tipped with pink, eyes thrown into shadow by the angle of the sun. Inscrutable. Impenetrable. 

When Serena found out the truth about Bernie’s marriage, that particular imaginative scenario lost its appeal. She didn’t want to know the Bernie who had been married to Marcus; a Bernie who lied and cheated and lived half in darkness. That wasn’t the woman she knew – wasn’t her Bernie at all, yet, but a hollowed out version of her; a fertile soil from which the new Bernie would grow, stronger and more brilliant than she could have imagined.

They’d have been casual friends, and nothing more. 

How different it would have been though, had she come across Bernie when she was first divorcing Edward, sure of herself at long last. Serena Campbell, consultant general surgeon - as much of a web of contradictions as anyone could be, but clutching each and every thread of it tightly and expertly in her hands. That Serena, newly reckless and imbued with a sense of freedom, would have careened into an equally wild-eyed Bernie Wolfe at a breakneck pace and exploded in a short-lived and soon regretted shower of sparks. They would not have spoken again, but Bernie would have changed her life irrevocably.

//

So it went on, a thousand meetings in a thousand places. Past versions of themselves in bars in Paris, free and unattached and unburdened by history; children in a sandpit at the age of 5, negotiating the use of the red spade in the same way that they’d go on to negotiate a patient treatment plan at 50, together and in tandem all that time; a chance encounter in a bar the night before her wedding, before resigning herself to 20 years of Edward’s company. Everyone they ever were or ever could be, colliding in every conceivable scenario; some became friends, and some fell in love, and some hated the very sight of each other. Brief encounters in the street and twenty year romantic relationships, all filed away in Serena’s mental rolodex for perusal at her own leisure. 

When Serena, newly returned from suspension and already packing up her office in a fit of pique, came across Bernie’s neatly wrapped welcome back gift, she realised that there was really no other time or place that they could have ever met; that something – the stars, or fate, or sheer dumb luck – had brought them together at precisely the right time. A hip flask of Shiraz in Bernie’s own camouflage medical bag – a startlingly, intimately thoughtful gift, and somehow, exactly what was needed in that moment. Every strand of their lives, every choice they’d ever made, had led them to each other; a concept both exhilarating and terrifying. Bernie Wolfe was inevitable, she thought, and she wasn’t sure why she hadn’t realised it before. All those worries about wasted years, about the amount of time they could have had – they were nothing to the people they were now, in this moment. She felt that she was on the brink of something extraordinary, thought it wasn't until weeks later, when Bernie finally kissed her, that she realised what it was: an entire new world, flowering just for her; rich and verdant and totally unlimited. 

//

When Bernie left for the Ukraine in a wild flurry of terrified eyes and half breathed promises, Serena wondered why the very worst imaginative scenario had never occurred to her: a life in which she had never met Bernie at all.


End file.
